Efficient data integration has become a staple in the insuranceand financial services industries. EDI-and now XML standards-haverevolutionized data exchange between producers, carriers, agents,and clients.

Recognizing the increasing need to exchange data globally, andallowing different programming languages to talk to one another,Microsoft is taking a step toward opening up its once proprietarylanguages to multiple platforms-even Linux!-and allowing thelanguages to talk to one another.

"One of the things Microsoft has been smart about this time isproviding a framework people are going to use that won't alienateanybody else," says Doug Seven, coauthor of Programming Data-DrivenWeb Applications with ASP.Net and CEO of codejunkies.net. "It'salmost as if everybody in the world can suddenly speak the samelanguage."

Microsoft has done this by basing .Net on industry standardprotocols-by sending XML over SOAP and HTTP-to exchange data.

"Our strength has always been our tool set and our developermind share," says David White, senior technology specialist forMicrosoft. "If we go on the open standards and protocols, such asXML and HTTP, and build solutions on our platform to talk to otherplatforms, we could show better total cost of ownership, fastertime to market, and better scalability in the tool set."

ASP.Net uses Common Language Runtime (CLR) to allow Visual Basic7, JavaScript and JScript, and C# to talk to one another. Becausethis compiled, object-oriented language is the basis for VB,JavaScript and C#, they can support inheritance and overloading toeach others' objects. This allows programmers to write in whateverlanguage they're most comfortable with or best suits theirapplication. What's more, moving to a compiled language instead ofan interpreted one should enhance application performance.

"I think that's the beauty of it-that you can build yourapplication on the platform and tools that best fit your needs,"White says. "And the good thing about that is when thattool/platform/programming paradigm no longer fits your needs, youcan go ahead and replace it without affecting your clients...aslong as your XML interface stays the same."

As a downside, VB-only programmers may not be comfortable withobject-oriented programming, particularly now that it's included inVB.

".Net gives developers much more power, and the only cost tothem is going to be some additional training," White says. "If youuse it to its full extent, it requires you to have a baseunderstanding of object-oriented design principles and applicationprinciples. And I would venture to say that the majority of VBprogrammers do not have that knowledge, and will have to acquirethat knowledge to make full use of what we're providing as a toolset."

ASP.Net also tries to ease the developer's job by providing aFrameworks Class Library, or FCL, that offers reusable objects forstandard programming functions. For instance, coding support forvarious browsers can someday become as ancient as DOS.

"Financial institutions that go to the Web end up coding largelibraries. This is now built into the Microsoft framework so theycan have one set of code, and the framework will generate thecorrect code for each class," White says. "To me, I think that'sone of the biggest benefits."

Another goal of .Net is to simplify deploying applications andeliminate rebooting servers for COM upgrades. Named "XCopydeployment," it allows registering to become simple copying insteadof having to go to each server to register deployments.

ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) also takes on the .Net suffix.Traditionally ADO has been used to return data to high performanceapplications. ADO.Net is expected to improve on that by supportingcurrent industry standards and using the DataSet object.Applications that use ADO.Net's disconnected or remote recordsetswill use XML to transfer data, so business partners can exchangedata without it being proprietary to one language.

"It's a simple process to work with data, and get data from thedatabase," Seven says. "It's also easier to replicate portions ofyour database. You can use multiple tables and scan relationshipsbetween them."
White expects Microsoft to extend its support times for its currentproducts when .Net is rolled out. "Microsoft realizes now that it'sin the enterprise space and it can't just turn around and dropsupport for VB 6," he says. "So one of the things we're tellingcustomers is we don't want you to feel that you have to upgrade to.Net."
Developers can download .Net betas for free frommsdn.microsoft.com/net. Seven recommends spending a little timeevery day testing .Net. But don't look for the official release of.Net until at least the year's end, which means not only a VisualStudio.Net, but also .Net integration with other Microsoftproducts.

The Move to Web Services

As IBM, Sun, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and smaller vendorsannounce their Web services solutions, Microsoft hopes that .Netwill become the developer's method of choice for deploying thismuch-talked-about technology.

A Web service is a programmable application logic that providesdata and services to other application logic, and is accessiblethrough the Web protocols SOAP, UDDI, XML and HTTP. Using thesestandard protocols, the platform, object model, and programminglanguage that implement the service are irrelevant, as long as theservice understands how to send and receive SOAP messages.

Because Web services are XML-based, developers can usetraditional Microsoft tools, Java or CORBA-or .Net when it becomesavailable. And there's no longer a need to write differenttranslation layers from one system or programming paradigm to thenext.

"You do not have to wait for .Net to write Web services," saysDavid White, senior technology specialist for Microsoft. "You canwrite them today in Microsoft's tools, you can write them today insomebody else's tools-Apache, Java, Perl, whatever."

Because Web services can be deployed using any language,developers in the insurance and financial services industries cantake advantage of its capabilities to exchange data with agents,carriers, and business partners.

Doug Seven, coauthor of Programming Data-Driven Web Applicationswith ASP.Net and CEO of codejunkies.net, says that insurancecompanies can save time using Web services because quotes can beconstantly updated and delivered instantly. "Insurance companiescan build policy pricing for agents around the country who canaccess the application," he says. "And the corporate offices canhave centralized data that are longer tied to a particular languageor operating system-that's all done behind the scenes."
Web services also can be used for intranets, extranets ande-commerce.

"I recommend that companies evaluate Web services today,especially the financial sector," White says. He says the perfectexample of a need for a Web service, which derived from an actualcustomer, is using it to access someone else's actuarial databecause you wouldn't have to write and store the data yourself.

White says Web services are a good swing away from oldmethodology because, instead of exchanging COBOL programs and datalayouts, you're exchanging data through XML. "That's a change, butit allows your system to be more agile-to change without affectingeverybody around you," White says. "Because that was the oldproblem: When I let everybody have my database layouts and my COBOLprograms, when I wanted to change, I had to check with every singlesystem that ever connected to me to ask their permission to changemy own system. That's what I think we need to get away from. If youcan abstract that away into a Web service, you can change what goeson behind without too much pain."

Cristine Antolik is a free-lance writer in Cincinnati, Ohio,and former webmaster for The National Underwriter Company.